lights in the dusk

Thursday, 4 February 2016

Coppola
transposes her own story - that of a spoiled little rich girl thrust into a
position of public notoriety that she cannot comprehend - to that of the title
character. In doing so, she exaggerates the naiveté of the real-life historical
figure; creating in the process a more piercing feminist commentary on the way
young women are often made to suffer for the sins of the
husband/father/brother/patriarch; picked on and destroyed (in the case of
Marie), not for her own inherently adolescent "decadence", but for
the poor decisions of her husband and the generally restricting environment that
she's forced to endure. In the title role, Dunst gives one of the great performances
of the last decade; maybe even the current century. Unlike so many of the
thankless roles she's chosen to play, Marie Antoinette sees her as both natural
and radiant; her interpretation of the character arc both subtle and
multifaceted; the implications of her final scenes - including the dreamlike
moment in which she offers herself up to the braying mob - are haunting and
emotionally distressing. Likewise, Coppola's filmmaking is sensitive, full of passion
and energy; less a Merchant-Ivory chocolate box piece than a film infused with
the influences of Derek Jarman and Sally Potter; specifically films like Edward
II (1991) and Orlando (1992). An anarchic, post-modern, but also romantic and
painterly approach that like Pasolini finds the past through a reflection of
the present (and vice-versa) in order to humanise the central character and to
create a political connection to the modern world.

Pigsty [Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969]:

Pasolini's
most impenetrable film is also his most beguiling. The work of a true visionary,
Pigsty is a film that blends hallucinatory scenes of prehistoric violence with
the extended monologues of the bourgeoisie; creating a juxtaposition that
suggests parallels between the past and the present, where the relationship
between the two posit the idea of history - and more specifically, persecution,
exploitation and corruption, essentially referring to issues of class and
entitlement - repeating itself endlessly until oblivion. While difficult to
know the true intentions of the filmmaker, the suggestion "a story about
pigs to tell a story about Jews" - combined with the overlapping of the
two conflicting stories and their different presentations of violence and
brutality (physical vs. psychological) - hints at the same anti-fascist polemic
of the author's later, more infamous provocation piece, Salo, or the 120 Days
of Sodom (1975).

Force Majeure [Ruben
Östlund, 2014]:

Östlund
direction of the film suggests a genial, less hectoring Michael Haneke; the approach
falling somewhere between The Seventh Continent (1989) and Caché (2005) by way
of a European sitcom. Like Haneke, the filmmaking style is studied and
controlled; rigid, but not inflexible. Colour, composition, editing and sound
are impeccable, establishing a feeling of antiseptic middle-class anxiety; an
empty "going-through-the-motions" depiction of modern life comparable
to a film like Archipelago (2010) by Joanna Hogg. Here, the popular and often
contentious "comedy of embarrassment" trope beloved by European
filmmakers - from Bertrand Blier to Mike Leigh, etc - merges with the spirit of
Buñuel; eviscerating the bumbling immaturity of its characters and their
self-created problems of first-world malaise, without becoming too nasty or nihilistic.

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya [Isao Takahata, 2013]:

For the
first time since Michael Mann's derided but exhilarating Public Enemies (2009),
the experience of a film and its filmmaking suggested an almost reinvention of the
very language of cinema. Hyperbole? Perhaps, but the purely sensory experience
of seeing these images explode within the rich cavernous blackness of the
cinema space was like moving towards something almost elemental; the imagery seemingly transforming itself from frame to
frame, at once ancient and yet entirely modern. It is a style that falls
somewhere between an image of a primitive cave painting brought to life by the
light of a flickering flame, the 'late' formalist works of Pablo Picasso that
embraced unfinished naiveté and the most current and sophisticated style of contemporary
animation, which is beyond anything I've ever seen. Although the fantasy
plotline is nothing remarkable (and nitpickers might note that the ending is an
almost shot-for-shot copy of the final scene from Shyamalan's despised Lady in
the Water, repeated here to great acclaim), the actual presentation of the
image is beyond words! The moments where the film seemingly breaks free from
reality, becomes entwined with the emotions of its central character and seems
to soar or disintegrate before our very eyes, is both astounding and unique.

Ex Machina [Alex Garland, 2015]:

1. Part
throwback to "mad-scientist" monster movies; with James Whale's
classic 1931 variation on the Frankenstein story providing an obvious template.
2. Part 'Bergmanesque' psychodrama; where the intense scenes of two characters
enacting a private crisis of existentialism on a secluded island could bring to
mind everything from the Hour of the Wolf (1968) to The Passion (1969). Part 'Soderberghian'
meditation on style and mood; the cold and clinical design, modernist spacing,
intimacy of its performances and minimalist composition of actors and objects
within a 2.35:1 frame is as much reminiscent in its filmmaking as the
underrated Solaris (2002) as anything by the more frequently associated Stanley
Kubrick. As contemplation of the line between man and machine, between
consciousness and unconsciousness, Garland's film is up there with the best of
Mamoru Oshii, such as Avalon (2001) and Ghost in the Shell: Innocence (2004),
as well as standards of the genre, such as Blade Runner (1982) and A.I.
Artificial Intelligence (2001). A work connected to the concerns of the modern
world, but propelled by themes that are timeless and emotionally germane.

Accattone [Pier Paolo Pasolini,
1961]:

At the time
I couldn't find the words for this one; I'm not sure I can find them now!
Suffice to say that a whole sphere of world cinema begins (and ends) with the
film in question; more so perhaps than the supposed year zero of Godard's endlessly
lauded new wave defining À bout de souffle (1960) (though JLG is still
eternal). So many of the scenes, images, aesthetics, preoccupations and
concerns presented in Pasolini's film can be found in the work of cinema's
great modern masters; everyone from Coppola to Scorsese, Fassbinder to Jarman, Monteiro
to Denis, Farrara to Haynes, etc have borrowed from Accattone and its singular
approach to character, theme and setting As a first-time filmmaker, Pasolini
emerged full formed; his whole notion of cinema as a means of reflecting the
past by way of the present (and vice versa) finds an expression in the way he depicts
the central character as both lout and loser, but at the same time imbuing him
with the kind of spiritual conviction, sympathy and vainglorious nobility of a
martyred saint. As such, the methodology of Pasolini, which so often is
defined, misleadingly, as "neo-realism", places the author far closer
to the spirit of a man like Caravaggio than any of his cinematic peers; an
artist who found in the bodies and faces of his local thugs, destitute crones
and harlots the most sacred of religious (and later historical) icons.

The Lone Ranger [Gore Verbinski,
2013]:

Pitched
somewhere between the pure cinematic spectacle of The General (1926) and the political
'kill your heroes' cynicism of Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Verbinski's
film wrestle with complex themes, from genocide and corruption, to betrayal and
unrequited love, all the while fashioning a big-budget action adventure extravaganza
that far eclipses the simple pleasures of his earlier, more successful Pirates
of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). Placing his scenes of
wily escapism within a context of inglorious American history (brought to life
for a child who knows only of its "heroes" while the reality is
something far more cruel) the results are both thrilling and affecting. A rare
but perfect example of a Hollywood blockbuster committed to taking risks.

Clouds of Sils Maria [Olivier
Assayas, 2014]:

Throughout
the film, several layers of interpretation become intertwined. First, a
deconstruction of the psychosexual politics of Fassbinder's early masterpiece The
Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972); second, a Persona (1966)-like meta-drama
about the difficult relationship between women (a stricken actress and her
aide); third, a reiteration of Irma Vep (1996) and its playful
"anti-Hollywood" rhetoric (replete with faux comic book style
blockbuster-sequence occurring during the second act); fourth, a film about the
"old wave" being replaced by the new (and through this a personal
commentary on Assayas's own cinema); fifth, a film about filmmaking (with
several personifications of the director); and finally, a documentation of a
natural phenomenon (in this instance 'the maloja snake') that becomes an
onscreen miracle analogous to the flickering flame of Tarkovsky's Nostalgia
(1983) or the final sequence of Eric Rohmer's The Green Ray (1986). A
masterpiece.

Goltzius and the Pelican Company [Peter Greenaway, 2012]:

This
dizzying mix of multi-media phantasmagoria - à la Prospero's Books (1991) - and
Brechtian dissertation on the nature of voyeurism - recalling remnants of The
Baby of Mâcon (1993) - is also Greenaway's clearest and perhaps most personal
statement on the nature of cinema and its roots in both picture-making and
performance. With this in mind, the character of Hendrik Goltzius, the
German-born Dutch painter, printmaker and engraver at the heart of this tale of
intrigue and expression, becomes a prototypical-filmmaker, in much the same way
that Rembrandt did in the earlier and no less fascinating Nightwatching (2007).
He's also a potential surrogate for Greenaway himself, reinforcing the film's personal,
crypto-autobiographical elements, wherein the character is presented as an
artist struggling against financiers, critics and the scourge of censorship to
achieve a vision every bit as daring, creative and revelatory as the film
itself.

Medea [Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969]:

In the title
role, Maria Callas becomes a full force gale; her performance ably
demonstrating a level of passion and pain that seems beyond conviction. As she
stands rebellious in the flames of her wounded love, she defies the deceitful
Jason (and by extension, the apathy of the viewing audience): "it's useless;
nothing is possible now!" As a final epitaph, it captures both the sadness
of a woman broken and betrayed by circumstances beyond her own control, as well
as the overwhelming disappointment of the filmmaker when confronted by the
corruption of a modern world closed off to the magic of myth and legend. As
ever, Pasolini's depiction of pre-history is never about ornamentation or simply
providing a backdrop to a dramatisation; his presentation of the past is more a
reflection of the present. The vibrancy, the atmosphere, the jarring culture
shock, each evoke a feeling of authenticity; it's as if Pasolini and his crew
had actually ventured back in time to a particular period to record it with
their handheld camera. However, this feeling of immersion is to ignore the
intentional discrepancies, anachronisms and stylisations, all of which are
intended to bring the story of Medea out of the world of Greek myth and into
the Europe of the 1960s and beyond. The sad tale of Medea's exploitation and
destruction by love, jealousy, political deceit and the cruel patriarchy (either
as a character, or as a surrogate for something else), is one that continues to
reverberate throughout history and in countless different guises. A powerful
experience.

Thursday, 14 January 2016

Oshii
manages to corral the influences of '60s Godard (post-modernism) and '80s
Godard (poetic ennui) alongside elements of Seijun Suzuki and Jerry Lewis;
finding a middle-ground between the pop-art sci-fi reportage of Alphaville
(1965) and the comical-philosophical patchwork of Keep Your Right Up (1987) or
King Lear (1987). For those that find the director's later (and for me no less
essential) films to be largely humourless, self-serious ruminations on tired
cyber punk concerns, The Red Spectacles is a work of genuine comic brilliance,
both deadpan and slapstick; albeit, with a mystical, vaguely metaphorical
climax that questions the nature of reality, existence, perception, etc. It
also works as a fairly successful if academic experiment in cinematic
stylisation analogous to what von Trier would attempt in films such as The
Element of Crime (1984), Epidemic (1988) and Europa (1991); in short, a gnomic
synthesis between genre deconstruction, social commentary and self-referential
critique.

Song of the Sea [Tomm
Moore, 2014]:

A poetic,
intensely lyrical family drama, which, like the greatest works of Studio Ghibli,
has been sold as a conventional children's adventure story, but in reality
seems a far more penetrating examination of deeply human concerns - such as
bereavement, grief, abandonment and the end of childhood innocence - which will
only be truly felt by an older, more sensitive audience. The imagery throughout
is rich and magical, beautifully designed and animated with great imagination,
but always relevant to the central story of the two children and their familiar
disconnection. From the old woman transformed by the fearful children into the
image of a great owl, to the lonely giant turned into a mountain by his
sorceress mother so as to stop him from drowning the world in an ocean of tears,
the flights of fancy only deepen the metaphorical interpretations of the work.

The Canterbury Tales [Pier Paolo
Pasolini, 1972]:

Pasolini as the
figure of Geoffrey Chaucer gives the film a more tangible through-line than his
earlier, similarly picaresque but looser exploration of Boccaccio's The
Decameron (1971). Here, the same medley of stories - which run the gamut from
satirical swipes at politics and religion to bawdy "sexcapades" and Chaplin
pastiche - are tied together by the presence of Chaucer as self-reflexive
surrogate for Pasolini; casting his critical eye not just over a medieval
burlesque but its reflection on the modern world. The films' third act
depiction of Hell as a surreal Hieronymus Bosch-like fantasia elevates the work
above the level of the "merely great" to the realms of absolute
genius! One of the most bizarre and inventive sequences Pasolini ever filmed. Lyrical,
funny and disturbing in equal measure.

3 Women [Robert Altman, 1977]:

Altman's
strangest film. A pre-Lynch take on Lynchian themes of dissociation, identity,
alienation, the blurring of perspectives. Nods to Persona (1966) escape the
curse of empty "Bergmanesque" imitation by being delivered in
Altman's unique and characteristic approach; the camera drifting nomadically
across complex scenes; picking out startling shots, strange objects, moments
that seems inconsequential but make sense on reflection. A haunting and
hypnotic work that rivals the director's earlier psychological study, Images (1972).

Nymphomaniac: Vol. I & II (Director's Cut) [Lars von Trier, 2013]:

1. Joe
fashions a story from the ephemera of Seligman's room. Why? Is she telling her
own story or something else? The framing device gives credence to the more
preposterous moments; creates a context for Joe to indulge in fantasy but also
for Seligman to interject; to deconstruct the material. In this sense the film
is not just a thesis on the themes herein, but a self-reflexive study on von
Trier's own methodology. 2. Joe's story about the paedophile suggests hidden
implications at the end. Why is she telling these stories to Seligman? What
response is she looking for and does she get it? Is the film a chronicle of one
woman's self-destruction/transfiguration through sexual experience or a cruel
game of deception and entrapment? I would say both. The subtleties of the
ending introduce a profound degree of potential reinterpretations. 3. A
pornographic variant on The Princess Bride (1987) with all of the same
self-reflexive dialogues about the relationship between 'author' (Joe as
surrogate for von Trier) and 'spectator' (Seligman as surrogate for the
audience). However, the film is also the clearest, most penetrating iteration
of the filmmaker's recent themes; depression, self-destruction, gender
identity, the cruelties of nature, etc. A revelatory masterwork for von Trier.

Mr. Holmes [Bill Condon, 2015]:

While the
concept of a logical Holmes encountering the one thing beyond his understanding
(actual human emotion) could have been played for cheap sentimentality,
Condon's film hits somewhat harder. As an investigation into memory as an
effort to understand what it is to be hurt by something beyond rational
comprehension, the film ably touches on issues of war, genocide, failure and
grief in a profound and hugely compelling way; deconstructing the notion of the
procedural (or, more plainly, the detective story) until it becomes a
penetrating and insightful rumination on age, memory, experience, repentance
and the inability to let go.

Welcome to New York [Abel
Ferrara, 2014]:

A fearless
political commentary disguised as psychological examination. Ferrara uses his
Strauss-Kahn facsimile as personification of both the financial crisis and the
attitude of those in positions of power; here protected by laws that leave them
free to use and abuse the lowest rung of society. The character, like the
condition itself, becomes a wild animal; pawing and groping his way through the
culture made flesh; consuming everything.
The resulting arrest and trial is like an indictment against the city itself;
that inbuilt corruption of money as something above the safeguarding of actual
human experience that allows all other levels of corruption to be maintained.
Anchored by Depardieu's grotesque, violent performance, and a series of
penetrating dialogues that hint at the true circumstances at play, Welcome to
New York is arguably Ferrara's most powerful and necessary work.

Phantom of the Paradise [Brian De
Palma, 1974]:

De Palma
buries a personal commentary on creative freedom and the exploitation of the
artist beneath a post-modern blend of Goethe and Leroux, camp B-movie horror and
exaggerated glam rock. Peppered with additional nods to silent comedy,
Hitchcock (naturally) and Welles - to say nothing of a frenzied, faux-reportage
climax that deconstructs the line between fiction and reality, and reminds the
viewer of the counter-culture experimentation of the filmmaker's earlier, much
underrated Dionysus in '69 (1970) - the film works both as a vicious music business
satire and as a dazzling phantasmagoria, full of heightened emotions, bold
imagery and clever storytelling. The intelligent, self-reflexive soundtrack by
Paul Williams is without question one of the films greatest assets.

Here, lurid
exploitation meets art-house exploration, blending slasher movie tropes and
soft-core/soft-focus sexuality with deeper philosophical questions regarding
social identity, transgression and the 'beast within.' The atmosphere is
evocative of the adult fairy tales of Rolin and Argento, such as The Iron Rose
(1973) and Suspiria (1977) to name just two, but taken to a level of frenzied
sexuality and heightened violence that only compliments the films' rich
psychological themes. The combination of the baroque and the brutal is no less beautiful
and atmospheric than in a film like Neil Jordan's later masterpiece of 80s
meta-horror, The Company of Wolves (1984); another mesmerising and unsettling
work of dreamlike psychosexual surrealism.

L'argent [Robert Bresson, 1983]:

A film less
about 'money' or its power to corrupt or debase, than a film about actions and
their consequences. A good man is very gradually turned into a criminal by the
dishonesty and villainy of the world around him. As such, the man is less an
individual than a reflection of his own society. Bresson's characteristically
austere approach is perfectly suited to this story of dehumanisation; where
even a third act atrocity is presented without sensationalism or melodramatic
excess. As political commentary, the film very subtly communicates the ironies
of criminality; that those who initiated the chain of events receive little to
no punishment, while those on the bottom rung of society are forced to suffer a
genuine humiliation, speaks volumes. More than anything, Bresson's masterpiece
embodies the philosophy of Godard's 'Uncle Jeannot' character from his First
Name, Carmen (1983); "when shit's worth money, the poor won't have assholes."
A work of art.

Monday, 11 January 2016

1. A scatological
lampoon of dysfunctional domesticity; the gross-out depiction of a rural
Americana as seen through the demented eyes of Nana and Pop-Pop recalling the
uncomfortable suburban nightmares of Todd Solondz and (occasionally) David
Lynch. 2. A mock-documentary fairy story that deconstructs its own conventions
through the interaction between characters, further draped in the guise of a
Joe Dante style children's survival drama, where serious things are stated without
the need to become serious. 3. A semi-autobiographical
'film about filmmaking', in which the director splits his auteurist "id" between his two adolescent characters; the quiet and sensitive
Becca, who sees poetry in the landscape and aims to make a film that will heal parental
wounds, and the brash and narcissistic Tyler, who only hopes to see his name
trending through social media. 5. A film about forgiveness of the
"self" and Shyamalan's first masterpiece in (nearly) a decade.

Far from the Madding Crowd [John
Schlesinger, 1967]:

Much of what
makes the film astounding is not its translation of Hardy's text into cinematic
narrative, but the depiction of a rural lifestyle that throbs with a pastoral,
primal beauty. Scenes on the farm and the interactions between characters - either eating, drinking or enjoying the simple pleasures of life, the
daily grind - anticipates something along the lines of Pasolini and his bucolic trilogy
of life; more specifically, his masterpiece The Canterbury Tales (1972). Far
greater than any conventional literary melodrama adapted from a similar source,
Schlesinger's film becomes a hymn to the splendour of nature, colour and the
drama of the changing light.

The Steel Helmet [Samuel
Fuller, 1951]:

Few films on
the subject of war are so brazen in their condemnation of the futility of conflict
and all of its inherent prejudices, while still managing to pay tribute to the
heroism of those that take part. Fuller's film might not compete with the
spectacle of more recent efforts, like Saving Private Ryan (1998), nor the subversive satirical bite of a masterpiece like the Vietnam-eta Full Metal Jacket (1987), but the
depth of its ideas and the sensitivity of its intentions are well beyond the
level of contemporary example.

Cover Girl [Charles Vidor, 1944]:

A film about
objectification, desire, ambition, regret, jealousy, the thrill of performance;
about doing something for the love of it and not just for the fame. On-stage
drama spills out behind the scenes; a sense of joie de vivre envelopes both
audience and protagonists, finding hope in the hopelessness, beauty in tragedy;
traces of Cocteau (as Kelly breaks the mirrored illusion of the surrogate screen
to free himself of the "id") and pure romanticism lead to a visual
spectacle far greater than anything in today's computer generated blockbusters.
If nothing else, Cover Girl illustrates the lost art of "performance"
as its own special effect.

The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story [Peter Greenaway, 2003]:

Every sound and
image is presented as a series of layered reflections; depicting the surface
(the conventional narrative, which is enthralling throughout) but also the
subtext, and a deconstruction of the form. Actual history is interwoven with
fact and fiction, fantasy and autobiography, as well as Greenaway's continual
obsession with the various ephemera of lists and numerical miscellanea, all
adding up to a vast but never alienating compendium of sights, sounds and cinematic
textures all working in service of a funny and fascinating tale. The film, even
without the benefit of its concluding chapters, Vaux to the Sea (2004) and From
Sark to the Finish (2004), is nothing less than a total reinvention of the
language of cinema.

Hard to Be a God [Aleksey
German, 2013]:

Falling
somewhere between the immersive, mystical meditations of filmmakers like
Tarkovsky and Tarr and the surreal, allegorical weirdness of Boorman's similarly
satirical Zardoz (1974), German's long in production passion project is a film effectively
about the nature of existence. More specifically, about the propensity of the species
to find new and ever more cruel ways of decimating itself throughout the course
history, only to then reassemble itself and repeat the same mistakes. Unsurprisingly,
this is a unique, one of a kind film. At once frustrating, disorienting,
profound, silly, revolting, even sublime! As director, German denies the
audience everything one might find necessary to understanding his drama or identifying
with his central characters; forgoing even the most basic of exposition and
even allowing important narrative developments occur off-screen. Conventional
ratings seem irrelevant here; love it or hate it, this is a truly immersive and
original work; once seen, never forgotten.

Walker [Alex Cox, 1987]:

Anchored by
a powerful performance from Ed Harris in the title role, director Cox's
anarchic and imaginative political commentary on U.S. imperialism in Nicaragua
has lost none of its satirical significance or relevance in the era directly
following the Iraq war. Much of the film's blending of slow-mo Peckinpah
inspired carnage and in-depth social discourse could be seen as precursor to a
film like Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012), where post-modern lifts from
cult genre cinema are used to create a self-reflexive parallel between the past
and the present/fiction and reality/etc, but all delivered with a far greater level
of intelligence, integrity and scope.

Grizzly Man [Werner Herzog, 2005]:

In the
tragic tale of Timothy Treadwell, Herzog finds his archetypical "hero";
a man like Aguirre, Woyzeck or Kaspar Hauser driven mad by the modern world; losing
himself a fabled landscape that seems as if disconnected from time; his
insanity propelling him on a fated journey towards self-destruction. Herzog's
innate respect for Treadwell and his refusal to condemn the man's actions or
the course of events ensure that the film works more as a found-footage variant
on the filmmaker's usual themes of man's place in the wilderness, survival and
the nature of the "outsider" within society (as illustrated in the
titles above) and less as conventional documentary intended to educate, critique
or surmise. A fascinating and frequently heart-breaking look into the fragility of the human psyche and the mysteries of the natural world.

Pistol Opera [Seijun Suzuki, 2001]:

Suzuki is
one of the cinema's preeminent formalists; a filmmaker capable of elevating
even the most hackneyed of B-movie narratives to a level of audio-visual art.
Here he turns in a psychedelic Rorschach test that could have been described as
"modern Godard remaking '60s Godard" (to establish a prevailing if limiting
cinematic shorthand), if only for the fact that the film itself is pure Suzuki; in short, a loose remake
of the filmmaker's own new wave masterpiece Branded to Kill (1967). However,
like late-period Godard, Pistol Opera is a work of genuine modern art; a movie
where light, colour, sound, editing, design and composition are as essential to
the expression as its baffling and labyrinthine plot.

Unforgiven [Clint Eastwood, 1992]:

The final
statement of Eastwood as orator of the American west. His character here is
like a cross-section of all his past protagonists, creating a sense of the
concluding chapter of a career-long journey, from innocence into the abyss. From
Rowdy Yates to "the man with no name", from Josey Wales to the Pale
Rider, this is a man who has committed the worst violence and atrocity and
found himself transformed by it; a man striving to find peace but gradually
being pulled back into the brutality and the blood-shed. At its core, the film
is a meditation on violence and revenge; the morality of murder as a cold-blooded
act committed by cold-blooded people, regardless of how valiantly one might
attempt to justify it as an act of vengeance. The morality of trying to
maintain a semblance of "life" in the face of a death, and violence that leaves
scars, both physical and mental. A monumental film.

Sunday, 21 December 2014

Image: A family facing death.The unity of "the family" (pre-Mafia) and the spectre of death
that comes between them.

For directors that don't find an audience until two or three features in
their career (sometimes more than that), the critical reaction is often to
reduce those early films to the level of vague curiosities; strange artefacts
denied the right to ever be approached as legitimate films without comparison
to the work that eventually followed.How often is Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967) acknowledged as the first
Scorsese?The Delinquents (1957) as the
first Altman?Loving Memory (1971) as
the first Tony Scott?Hardly ever, if even
at all.The positive attributes of these
movies - ignored at the time as the work of any other anonymous first-time
"auteur" unworthy of attention or acclaim - are dwarfed by the
success of later films, such as Mean Streets (1973), MASH (1970) and Top Gun
(1986), where the cultural identity of the individual director was now apparent
and fully formed.The tragedy of this is
that most first-features provide a skeleton key to unlocking the various
secrets of a filmmaker's subsequent work; contextualising not just those films
that were able to break through the barriers of popular culture and the
vagaries of public taste, but also the perceived failures; the films that flew
too close to the sun and as such were denigrated and defamed by critics for an assortment
of subjective rationale.

To use a more recent example, the current ideological approach to the
films of M. Night Shyamalan is to view each new film as a kind of competitive sequel
to The Sixth Sense (1999).Audiences go
into these films looking for something that plays to the conventions of a
recognisable genre (there, the supernatural mystery) when it would be far more
beneficial to see the work as a continuation of the same semi-autobiographical
thread that was forged in his very first feature, Praying with Anger (1992); a naive
"confessional" in which the young filmmaker exposed his deepest
passions and fears, while at the same time creating a drama that was rich in sensitivity,
pathos and wit. A film where the
influence of the supernatural was both cultural and spiritual, and not just there
to placate classifications of genre.The
same is true of a film like Dementia 13; a beautifully shot gothic horror story
that works to the influences of Clouzot's Les diaboliques (1955) and
Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), while also introducing several themes (such as the
thread of familial dysfunction, as well as the line between passion and insanity)
that would continue throughout the director's subsequent work. For instance, here the struggle of three
brothers against the experiences and expectations of a woman from the outside
initiated into this strange domestic unit provides a blueprint for the
filmmaker's era-defining landmark The Godfather (1972), while the generally
macabre atmosphere and the film's fevered stylisations would in turn infiltrate
the subject-matter and approach of both Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) and Twixt
(2011) respectively.

While frequently dismissed as little more than cheap schlock -
especially in light of Coppola's later acclaim - Dementia 13 is no less a
"complete" film and an entirely compelling one.The gothic
ambiance is stylish and otherworldly, the story is interesting and genuinely engaging,
while the psychology of the mysterious killer is well developed and fascinating
in its inevitable revelation.More so,
the film is significant (in my view, at least) as a precursor to the sub-genre
of Italian murder mysteries known internationally as the "giallo" (or
"gialli", as plural).For many
critics, the first acknowledged giallo was Mario Bava's excellent Hitchcockian thriller,
The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963). However,
with its flashbacks to a tragic event as expressive of the killer's tortured psyche,
as well as the more conventional presentation of women in peril and characters who
seem compelled to become amateur sleuths in an effort to solve the crime, so
much of Dementia 13 seems to set a template for the later films of Dario
Argento, such as Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971), and his masterworks Deep Red
(1975) and Tenebrae (1982).While less
refined or as technically grandstanding as Argento's classics, Dementia 13 is
no less a remarkable achievement from the very young Coppola; a film that succeeds
as a visually captivating and often chilling murder mystery, but also provides
a much needed element of psychological depth.

____________________________________________________

12. The Rain People [1969]

Image: The characters divided; unable, physically and
metaphorically, to connect.

Coppola's return to low-budget independent filmmaking following his
Hollywood excursion with the flawed and forgettable Finian's Rainbow (1968) is
a stripped back, minimalist character study that seems to anticipate a certain
kind of movie that would become more popular during the ensuing decade.Shades of everything from Five Easy Pieces (1970)
to Bleak Moments (1971) to The Sugarland Express (1974) to Alice Doesn't Live
Here Anymore (1974) to Blue Collar (1978) can be found in the film's
unflinching observation of tortured, inarticulate characters at war with
themselves and those closest to them.It's
that same spirit of disenchantment that propelled a film like Easy Rider (1969)
to investigate the broken heart of the American dream from the perspective of
those most burned by the disappointment of its empty promises.But while Easy Rider was a film looking out
at a country lost and delirious, Coppola's characters are trapped by their own circumstances;
bound by their bodies and their limitations and their relationships; the
personal and private struggle(s) becoming less of a commentary on the state of
the country in the final throes of the turbulent '60s than a personification of
it.

It's a film I haven't seen in many years - first discovering it at
around the age of fourteen and being surprised because (in those pre-IMDb days)
I'd mistakenly assumed The Godfather (1972) was Coppola's debut - but the sense
of bitterness, the conflict and the discontent that eats away at these
characters and pushes the drama towards an accumulative air of hopeless desperation
has stayed with me, even if many of the broader or more central elements of the
plot have long since faded from view.I
remember my initial disappointment that the film wasn't shot in that
hallucinatory, illusory Coppola style (made familiar through his subsequent work
on Apocalypse Now, Rumble Fish and Dracula; all personal favourites at the time),
but on reflection I came to see its fragile, withdrawn, subtle and naturalistic
approach as a precursor to that of the filmmaker's later masterpiece, The
Conversation (1974).There as well as
here, Coppola evokes a feeling of characters too brittle and self-conscious to
survive in a world so harsh and impersonal; the sense of drama resulting less
from their natural human instinct to connect than their inability to reach out,
to find a happiness in the embrace of someone else.

In re-watching short clips of the film in preparation for this post, I
was reminded of so many things that impressed me when seeing the film at a
younger age.The vulnerability of the
central character - her proto-"feminist" search for identity; to find
a place of her own - is hugely compelling, in part because of Coppola's unsung talent
as a dramatist, capable of translating complex thoughts and emotions into
images and scenes, but also because the character is brought to life so vividly
and sympathetically by the actress Shirley Knight that her journey - emotional as
well as geographical - connects to whatever feelings of disappointment or
frustration that might be carried by the viewing audience. Here, the experience of the film and the
perspective of its central characters is beautifully defined by its poetic and
evocative title. The Rain People (as opposed
to "the sunshine people") because these are characters battered beneath
a black cloud, forever grey and dismal; but also in the sense that these are
characters, like the rain, somewhat intangible or elusive; there one minute,
gone the next.As characters, they
become like the drips and puddles left behind in the wake of a torrential
storm; the only physical reminders of an all too brief yet tumultuous existence.

____________________________________________________

13. Peggy Sue Got Married [1986]

Image: Peggy Sue Through the Looking-Glass.A vision, trapped between dream and memory.

Besides the contentious Jack (1996) - a film that even I dislike! - the
wistful and innocent fantasy of Peggy Sue Got Married seems perhaps the most vehemently
dismissed and debated of all Coppola's films from that difficult period,
roughly 1984 to 1997, wherein the filmmaker worked simply to pay off his
debts.While subsequent efforts like
Gardens of Stone (1987) and Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988) are largely
ignored or passed over - with the no less controversial The Godfather: Part III
(1990) and Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) appealing mostly to their respective
cults - the film in question is too often seen as a vague triviality; a trifle unworthy
of Coppola's greater stature.I think
this is unfair, since the film is genuinely entertaining and enlivened by
Coppola's always interesting stylistic experiments and his very genuine
engagement with the predicament of the central character.While it would have been very easy for
Coppola to play the film as tongue in cheek - presenting its nostalgic view of
the 1960s as an "aww shucks!" time capsule, where everything is fine
and dandy - the screenwriters, Jerry Leichtling and Arlene Sarner, instead make
the character of Peggy Sue self-aware enough that she is able to recognise
(with the hindsight of an adult-life) the real concerns and calamities that -
in our formative years - dictate the type of person we eventually become.

In contrast to a more successful film, like Back to the Future (1985) by
Robert Zemeckis, where the reconstruction of the 1950s seemed like a pastiche
of an old TV sitcom (with only a few jarring incongruities used to provide ironic
laughs), the façade of late '50s/early '60s Americana is here transformed by
the central character's ability to see through the lies and promises that her
teenage-self once blindly accepted to be the foundations for a successful, well
adjusted life.As a result, there are
genuine pangs of both sadness and regret that weave their way through the
romantic comic-fantasy; where the anxieties, disillusionment and disappointment
of the middle-aged Peggy Sue is projected onto her surroundings, exposing the youthful
idyll for what it really is.In this
regard, the film is operating on two separate levels.On one, it presents itself as a conventional
fantasy, in which the character is genuinely transported back through time in
order to glean some greater understanding that will work to alter the course of
her more fruitless existence in the present-day (creating a modern parallel to
both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz), while on the other
level presenting an appropriation of the past as an extended psychodrama; where
everything that happens on screen is essentially confined to the parameters of
the character's own unconscious mind.

The audience is free to create their own interpretation, however, for me,
it's the opening shot of the film that makes obvious the intentions of the
filmmaker and his immense love for the illusory aspect of cinema, and in
particular its ability to transport the viewer, emotionally, geographically, or
in this instance, through time!Rather
than depict the central character gazing into a mirror as one might
conventionally approach it, Coppola looks back to the pure artifice of his
earlier One from the Heart (1982) and composes a very obvious trick shot, in
which the actress, Kathleen Turner as the titular Peggy Sue, faces the camera
in a cut-out mirror façade, while a body-double with a similarly coiffed wig
sits with their back to the camera, mimicking the actions of the star.The effect is immediately obvious as the
actions do not synch up, but this seems intentional, as Coppola draws the
attention of the audience to the idea of pretence and imitation; where the
presentation of a "magic mirror", able to depict not a reflection but
a projection, becomes a shorthand for the cinema itself.This self-reflexivity gives the film an added
dimension, as its later scenes of the middle-aged Turner playing her own
teenage counterpart becomes an obvious "performance", in the
theatrical sense, albeit one that carries the same sensitivity and weight of actual
feminist sentiment as Coppola's own fragile and reflective drama, The Rain
People (1969).

____________________________________________________

14. You're a Big Boy Now [1966]

Image: The woman objectified, displayed.More a symbol than a character.A personification of the movement itself.

The first
scene - the first image, in fact - takes place in a cavernous study hall.The austerity of the setting, the lack of
colour, already communicates the obvious; this is a place of routines,
conformity; the inertia of academia, writ large!As the camera pushes in - moving with a rigid
Kubrickian determination along a central corridor created by endless rows of desks
- the audience is compelled to observe a student body incapacitated behind text
books; the occasional cough and restless shuffling of bodies becoming their
only conceivable protest against the stifling silence of the space. Regardless, the camera continues its journey. When it reaches the double doors at the far end
of the room it stops, and in time with the first reverberating guitar chord of
'Girl, Beautiful Girl' by The Lovin' Spoonful, the doors erupt with a burst of
colour, sexuality and astonishing rock n' roll energy.Here, a gorgeous young waif in a bright
yellow mini-dress struts confidently down the allies between tables, as the
sound of swingin' pop invades the soundtrack.This woman - this vision, radiant, resplendent - looks like she's stepped
off the pages of a high-end fashion magazine, as chic, modern and fashionable as
the image itself.It's a total
counterpoint to the asceticism of the location; to these kids with their faces
buried in books. In a single moment,
Coppola has shaken the very foundations of the establishment.

The visual
metaphor - this symbol of conservative middle-America; the university as
bastion of the new status quo electrified into consciousness by a new
(European) sensibility - is also a prelude to the plot in miniature; the
seduction of the audience as precursor to the seduction of the central
character.In addition, the sequence is
also a commentary on the state of American cinema, as a kind of self-aware
critique.In the image of this study
hall - which, in presentation, is more like a museum; a place where dead
objects are laid out as a reminder of a life no longer lived - Coppola is
personifying the contemporary America cinema as a place numbed into a sedate
oblivion.The woman, with her confident
attitude, high style and air of exotic inaccessibility, is like the invading
cinema of Antonioni, Fellini, Bertolucci, Godard, etc.In pursuit of this character, the protagonist
becomes a mirror to Coppola himself, whose early passion for American theatre
was energised by his discovery of these comparatively more daring, exciting and
provocative filmmakers emerging from France, Italy and Japan.

In
attempting to meld the conventions of the traditional all-American love story
with the foundations of the then-contemporary European "art-cinema"
movement, Coppola is once again showing himself to be an innovator.While Dementia 13 (1963) can be seen as a
prototype of the Italian "giallo" - its blondes in peril, amateur
sleuths, sympathetic killer and flashbacks to a tragic event informing
everything from Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970) to Deep Red (1975) - and The
Rain People (1969) created the foundation for a decade's worth of penetrating, intimate
or observational character dramas, like Five Easy Pieces (1970), Two-Lane Black
Top (1971) and Scarecrow (1973), the film in question finds Coppola uniting an
American tale of boy meets girl with a cool and stylish European surface a full
year before the greater success of landmark "new Hollywood" movies
Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and The Graduate (also '67).However, what defines the work more than its
unsung position as precursor to the counter-culture renaissance of American film,
is its sense of vivacity and colour.The
film is a tremendous joy throughout, capturing in its simple tale the escapism
and creative freedom that one associates with both the spirit of youth and the
pop cinema of the 1960s, but with a biting undercurrent implicit in the
filmmaker's questioning of the tangibility of these impossible dreams against the
all too reassuring (and achievable) reality.

____________________________________________________

15. Dracula [1992]

Image: The Count returning from battle; already haunted by his
lost Elisabeta.

On the surface, this is a problematic film.Problematic in the sense that its tonality is
inconsistent.The performances range
from the wooden to the histrionic.The
dialogue is frequently clumsy, the delivery even worse; a combination of stilted
English affectation and garbled Eastern European hilarity.The pacing is rushed; scenes blurring into
one another, stumbling between moments, fighting for attention.The entire thing becomes more like a confused
reverie than something that takes its time to breathe, to settle; to allow the
audience to savour the atmosphere that Coppola so vividly creates, the imagery that
he so meticulously evokes.And yet it's
a film that remains entirely fascinating, thrilling and often quite affecting.This is the reckless and hallucinatory Coppola
of films like Apocalypse Now (1979), One from the Heart (1982) and Rumble Fish (1983)
let loose on a story that is rich in imagination, magical realism and an air of
the fantastique.A story that allows its
author to unleash an arsenal of filmmaking techniques, trick shots and
expressive stylisations, to create a feeling of the supernatural unleashing its
influence across every aspect of the film.

To find an emotional centre to anchor this explosion of theatrical decadence
and flamboyant mise-en-scène, Coppola and his collaborators approach the film,
not as a more conventional horror movie (although the lashings of violence and the
hideous creature effects play well to the requirements of the genre), but as a
romantic melodrama.Here, the intensity
of the imagery and the violence of its sexuality are each intended to express
the psychological wounds of the central character, destroyed and turned
monstrous by the loss of his greatest love.In this conception, the obsessive courtship between the mysterious Count Dracula
and the English belle Mina Murray becomes an attempt by the antagonist to
reclaim, in part (from the image of Mina), the memory of his lost
Elisabeta.From this, the film is
something of a precursor to the director's later work, Youth Without You
(2007), in which another aging European cheats death by becoming young again,
and finds in his courtship with an enigmatic woman of inexplicable origin a
reminder of a long lost love.In
Dracula, it is this loss that drives the film, defined as it is by an amazing
prologue, in which the Count, returning from battle to find the aftermath of
Elisabeta's betrayal as pitiless suicide, rejects Christ and turns to darker,
more elemental forces, which consign him to a living death (his ensuing pursuit
of Mina, as such, becoming more a chance at redemption than another insidious
or supernatural possession).

Ultimately the film is more successful as a meditation on obsessive or
undying love - or the idea of lovers finding a reflection of one another
through the ages; see also Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958) - than as a faithful
adaptation of the Bram Stoker text; but there are additional ideas here that
are equally compelling, and in a large way recompense some of the film's more glaring
weaknesses.For instance, one of the
more interesting innovations of the film (and one not often brought up in
discussion) is the way Coppola equates the arrival of Dracula with the various
advances in late nineteenth century technology; the cinema included.Through this, Coppola and his screenwriter
James V. Hart posit the idea of Dracula as somehow representative of these greater
changes (which would - in the course of time - usher in new and exciting ways
of looking at medicine, psychology, travel, art, religion, anthropology,
sexuality, etc).If the influence of
these greater changes would impact on the development of the twentieth century
then the depravity and carnality of the Dracula character likewise work to
infect and eventually destroy the puritanical, deeply superstitious Victorian society
of the film's setting, thus making possible the more progressive attitudes of
the subsequent age.